Ron Paul Says Goodbye

Katie Pavlich

11/15/2012 7:45:00 AM - Katie Pavlich

Presidential candidate and long time Representative Ron Paul said goodbye yesterday on the House floor as he prepares to make his exit from Congress after 23 years. He explained his consistent views throughout the past two decades and berated Washington for refusing to change or make hard decisions when it comes to the future.

As the father of what many characterize as the buoyant, bi-partisan New Liberty Movement, Paul shared “the plain truth” about Washington, America’s current national crisis and the greatest threats to the future.

Paul began by explaining his goals in 1976: to promote peace and prosperity by a strict adherence to the principles of individual liberty. He entered Congress hoping to alter the course of the country, seeing major financial crisis and a foreign policy undermining national security in the pursuit of empire as inevitable.

Chastising himself, Paul sheds light on his internal struggle as the last American statesman. “I sought, government would have had to shrink in size and scope, reduce spending, change the monetary system, and reject the unsustainable costs of policing the world and expanding the American Empire.”

He lists among his shortcomings the failure to halt the expansion of burdensome government, suffocating taxation, “incomprehensible” regulations, perpetual, unconstitutional wars, crippling deficits, rampant poverty and government dependency for corporations and special interests, which Paul admits is the most expansive in American history.